We will be discussing literary responses to analogous social, political or cultural changes from the period around the 1920s, and around the 2020s. The strange parallels between events of recent history and those of a century ago have been well noted (e.g. the COVID pandemic and Spanish Flu; conflict and invasion in Europe; women's rights or losses of rights; questions about the speed of change in the world) - our panel seeks to compare a wide range of literary depictions of such events in 20th century and contemporary literature. For example, the descriptions of war in Central Eastern Europe - and questions of international political involvement - in TS Eliot's 'The Waste Land' (1922) can be compared to recent publications describing global impassivity to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, such as Olesya Khromenchuk's recent 'The Death of a Soldier Told by His Sister' (2022).
We are not seeking to suggest the two periods entirely map together, but instead tease out similarities, explore the usefulness of past ideas, and examine changes in how literature has responded to moments of contemporary change and crisis.
